Because of Lifemiles’ prior fuzzy geography on creatively placing airports in award regions, there is a solid body of online English coverage on how to use the program, unlike some of Citi’s other transfer partners, which can be daunting to figure out.

Until now, the lacking ingredient was a strong transfer partner. They did not even have SPG.

Citi ThankYou steps in to rectify that with 1:1 transfers (in increments of 1,000).

This mutually increases the value of both programs. It even makes Lifemiles a better contender for primary Star Alliance program. Yay!

Generating Citi Thank you points can be quite easy with an AT&T Access More online 3x and lately a half-year of extra 2x by retention offers, for example. The other transfer partners I personally have had little use for so usually redeemed for airfare at 1.25. Even at discounted Lifemiles prices I am not a buyer.

For some of us, the whole point of this hobby is avoid spending cash. I certainly don’t travel “for free,” as I have annual fees and costs associated with manufactured spending, but those costs are really all I can afford, and I don’t want to spend additional cash to travel.

Do other people have good success redeeming LifeMiles? I signed up for the 60k credit card a year ago, and constantly find myself running into “Sold Out” or error messages when I try to book. This is when I see the exact same flights open for award travel on both United and Aeroplan websites. Is there a secret sweet spot of actual availability with LifeMiles? I’d like to like this program, but the frustrations have made it impossible.

I only got into the program with the introduction of the credit card. The buy miles stuff did not appeal to me even in GUM/SAW/etc days.

I have decent experience with straightforward stuff like a SEA-TPE on EVA. Complex stuff I run into issues too, plus plenty of airports that they can’t/won’t sell so I’ve not used them for any of my intra-Africa trips on Ethiopian. From reports of others, though the mixed cabin problem was fixed a while back, there are still many website issues. Calling can sometimes bear fruit with extreme patience.

There are only so many paying jobs writing miles and points, so I don’t hold it against their writers, a few of which produce quality pieces, that they write there. Other blogs that used to provide award program coverage have mostly migrated to tabloid items and deals.

I definitely see where you’re coming from, but I just feel any link to tpg is supporting the deception and unethical practices that go on there. But yes, I do agree quality writers have been lost to tpg. Julian being the best who was :/

About Stefan

Stefan Krasowski has traveled to 189 countries and is an expert on international travel, frequent flyer programs, and travel credit cards. More About Stefan»

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